Teaching Collaborative Writing: a Classsroom Study With Turkish English as a Foreign Language (Efl) Students

Abstract

The teaching of writing skills in a communicative and systematic way is inevitable considering the fact that students should be aware of the subject matters they learn and operate on while studying a foreign language. In this study, two classroom applications in which a consciousness raising task was implemented are presented with teacher and student reflections. The classroom applications mainly focused on writing in a collaborative manner with 23 Turkish EFL learners. The classroom procedure was videotaped and transcribed in order to reflect further on the experience. The results of the classroom applications were satisfying enough to discuss the importance of noticing and collaborative work in writing. Certain implications for teaching writing are also discussed.